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First
Date
by Sharmagne Leland-St.John
The summer I turned 17 years old I worked as a carhop at
a local drive-in at the corner of Magnolia Avenue and
Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. It
was called "Johnnie's." I worked there nights
and went to school in the daylight hours.
It was a fun job because it gave me plenty of
opportunities to practice with the cute guys who came in
flirting skills I would need in later life ! I got to
work out in the open air and I got to wear roller skates
which made me look much taller than my stunted 5'4."
After a while I had accrued what the older carhops and
waitresses referred to as "regulars." One of my
favourite regulars was a guy called Sonny. Sonny was so
hip, slick and cool. He used to pull up in this hot
souped up car. It was a metallic blue 57 Chevy with mag
wheels, 327 engine, and 4 on the floor. He used to call
me "Little Bit" because I was so thin and
small. He made me blush just like a little girl.
He'd come in once or twice a week and start flirting and
hitting on me to go out with him. I'd joke around with
him but I held fast to my rule. I had three rules in life
regarding dating. The first was don't date someone who
lives in the same apartment building as you because if
you break up one of you has to move. The second was don't
date customers or coworkers. If you date customers and
decide to stop seeing them it could become pretty
uncomfortable if they continued to patronize the place
where you work. I had seen a girl break up with a guy and
after the breakup he'd come in and run her ragged just to
get back at her. My third rule was don't date outside
your species.
Sonny would wait off to the side in his car sometimes for
over an hour just to be served by me. He'd just sit there
in his souped up Chevy and wait. It was cute and all the
other girls teased me about it. Finally just before
summer vacation Sonny was coming in every single night.
I remember one night he asked me what my favourite songs
were. I told him I liked "Sherry" by the Four
Seasons, and "Telstar," "Al de La,"
"I Wanna Be Bobby's Girl," "Save The Last
Dance For Me," all of The Beach Boys songs, and I
named a couple of others. A few nights later Sonny pulled
that souped up 57 Chevy into my station with music
blaring out the windows. He had bought a 45 rpm battery
powered record player and had gone down to Wallach's
Music City at Sunset and Vine and purchased every single
record I had named.
His next ploy was to bring a single red long stemmed rose
to me every night. I would take that rose home every
night to add it to the ones from the previous nights that
I had placed in a cut crystal vase next to my bed. I'd
pluck out the dead ones and freshen the water every
couple of days. I always had at least a dozen long
stemmed roses in that vase on my bedside table. The scent
of roses weaving its way into my dreams. My dreams of
slow dancing with Sonny.
With the beginning of vacation I switched my schedule to
days. During those crazy dazzling nights I started
heading over to Hollywood and frequenting the Sunset
Strip with all of it's disco clubs. Gazzari's, The
Whisky, Pandora's Box, The Trip, and my favourite P.J's.
Sometimes if I had a date I'd go all the way into Beverly
Hills to The Daisy which was a private club. It was an
exciting summer.
Sonny meanwhile had stopped coming in at night and like a
camp follower had begun to stop by for lunch on a daily
basis. One day in early August he told me that the
following Friday would be his 21st birthday and he wanted
to invite me to share it with him. I was so deeply
honoured that someone would want to spend such a
momentous occasion with me, a little girl from the
Valley, that I acquiesced. I broke rule number 2. I
agreed to go out on the town with Sonny.
But somehow our signals got crossed. I thought we were
going to go out dancing and he thought we were going to
go to a movie. When he picked me up for our "big
date" he met me at the curb which I knew my father
would never have approved of. My dad always insisted that
the boy come to the door. Sonny also didn't get out of
the car to open the door for me which I didn't approve
of.
I considered myself to be a lady and expected to be
treated like one. He just sort of reached across and
threw the metallic blue door open a bit. I got into the
car and Sonny immediately made a comment about my disco
outfit. So I said, "Well, we are going to P.J's
aren't we?"
"No!" he replied, "I thought we'd catch a
movie." I point blank told him that I really would
rather go dancing. He point blank refused. Check mate!
Well, it was his birthday so I guess it was his right to
choose where we would go. The next thing I knew we were
at the Van Nuys Drive-in Theater. When I found out that
he had intended all along to take me to a drive-in movie
I hit the roof of that 57 Chevy with the mag wheels.
In my dating survival guide if you break rule number 2,
rule number 2a is don't go to a drive-in on a first date.
Finally after heated discussion we agreed to a movie but
I insisted on a walk-in. The only walk-in cinema that was
playing the movie he wanted to see was at the Pan Pacific
way over in Hollywood. Somehow I still had this fantasy
that I could entice him to take me to P.J's dancing after
the movie.
We started off over the hill snaking our way through
Laurel Canyon with its twists and curves and it's
fragrant Eucalyptus trees. A usually talkative Sonny had
suddenly become deathly quiet. He didn't speak a word
during the entire ride. He seemed to be brooding. When we
pulled up in front of the theater Sonny suggested that I
get out and buy the tickets while he parked the car. He
then handed me a crisp ten dollar bill.
Every time I had ever seen Sonny he had never exited his
57 metallic blue chevy with the mag wheels, 327 engine,
and 4 on the floor. So you can imagine my utter surprise
and shock when, a few minutes later, Sonny came hobbling
up to the ticket window on hand crutches and only one
leg. His left leg had been amputated just below the knee
from an injury he had sustained in Viet Nam. This
explained why he didn't want to go dancing but it didn't
explain why he stopped coming to Johnnie's or why I never
saw or heard from him again.
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